Kitsap's Clear Creek Revival

Clear Creek meanders underneath a foot bridge in the newly restored portion of Clear Creek Trail in Silverdale on Friday. Returning the creek to a more natural path was one of the main purposes of the restoration project.(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)Buy Photo

A 10-month project to restore the Silverdale creek’s natural functions is finishing up this month, but it’s already been tested by heavy winter rains.

Rather than flood and knock out trail sections, spill onto roads and threaten businesses as it has in the past, the creek simply stretched out a bit, moving into a floodplain that had been absent since Silverdale underwent heavy development.

“Silverdale Way didn’t flood this time, so that’s already been a highlight,” said Renee Scherdnik, a Kitsap County water resources specialist who helped lead the project. “The natural functions of the creek are managing stormwater so we don’t have to.”

Billed as a stormwater upgrade, the project also aimed to enhance salmon habitat and improve a section of the Clear Creek Trail, one of the county’s most popular walking and running routes.

“What’s happened is pretty incredible,” said Mary Earl, a volunteer with the Clear Creek Task Force. “The way it was before, sometimes the flooding would take a whole section of the trail’s boardwalk and float it down the stream.”

The $4 million project restored the creek’s curving route in 30 county-owned acres north of Waaga. The new meandering path is how the creek used to pass through Silverdale. But over the past century, the creek was pushed – first by farmers and later by commercial development – into a straighter, narrower course that resembles a ditch more than a natural stream.

The once-plentiful salmon run declined, and flooding became an annual problem.

Started in May, the project tore out an abandoned road, created 7 acres of wetland and restored 20 acres of habitat between Highway 3 and Silverdale Gateway Park.

In September, a section of creek near the Waaga overpass was drained and rerouted through a newly-built channel. Many of the fish and other critters in the rerouted section were caught and released downstream.

Nearly 700 logs and stumps were added to the creek to boost habitat complexity and variability to its course.

A meadow of invasive canary grass and mounds of nightshade clogging the creek’s east fork were torn out and replaced with 80,000 native plants.

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Doug Ludwig, of Keyport, and his dog, Leo, walk across one of the new foot bridges of the newly restored Clear Creek Trail in Silverdale on Friday.(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)

The trail has three new bridges and asphalt surfacing on sections near Gateway Park. A “green wall” with small plants embedded in its surface was installed near the park’s off-leash dog area to shore up a slide-prone slope.

The trail reopening was repeatedly delayed by wet weather.

“That was the big thing everybody wanted to know – when is the trail going to open?” Earl said. “We thought it would open in October, but then the rains came.”

The project is one of about a half-dozen the county has completed with the aim of reviving the creek’s health. Three narrow culverts were swapped out to improve fish passage, and the Bucklin Hill bridge project — completed in July — has enhanced the creek's estuary on Dyes Inlet.

“I’d like to see us do more projects like this,” Scherdnik said. “Hopefully, the public sees the benefit and wants to see similar projects in their community, too.”